


got this need for you forming in my beating heart

by medvedevas



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-27 10:25:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12579644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medvedevas/pseuds/medvedevas
Summary: If anyone were to ask, Eddie wouldn't be able to put his finger on any specific moment. It's more a series of little things, a messy patchwork of recollection — spreading out the significant pieces of his life and finding Richie in every single one.Or: Richie and Eddie, going forward and back. A collection of moments big and small.





	1. I. NEIBOLT / AUGUST 1989

_IF SUMMER HAS LUNGS/  
IT IS BREATHING OUT _

 

Eddie is thirteen. Eddie is going to die.

Not that death in itself is a shock. Everybody dies. Eddie knows this.

It's the  _how_ that gets him.

When he thinks of dying, he's always imagined terrible, terrible things — disease spreading beneath his skin and infecting his organs, car wrecks with shattered glass and pools of blood, the breath stolen from his lungs with his inhaler just a hair's breadth too far away. Death comes for him in many forms in his worst nightmares, but never like this.

Stale breath fans across his face, rows and rows of yellow teeth filling his vision. There is nothing else left — only this, a wheezing child and ancient evil. It does not simply wish to scare him, It wants to  _devour_ him, swallow him whole. Terror blurs his vision, and his sobs are muffled by the creature's hand over his mouth. Outside the sun is burning warm on the asphalt and kids are laughing and dogs are barking and Eddie is here, trapped within the rotting walls of some sort of twisted funhouse.

They've done it now, haven't they? Crawled into the belly of the beast, and now this house is going to fucking  _digest_ them.

His saving grace comes in the form of his two best friends, tripping over each other in their haste, and Eddie is too relieved to wonder why they hadn't come sooner. The clown separated them, he remembers vaguely. It had lured him away.

They stand on the opposite end of the room, frozen in place, mouths agape and Eddie exhales in a soft cry as the creature abandons Its post by his side, slouching over to his friends instead. There is a scream, distinctly female, a spatter of gore and the horrible sound of bones crunching, and then Richie and Bill are across the room and at his side. It's all seven of them now, together, cowering in corners, a chorus of screams as the monster shrieks its agony into the hot, rancid air. Black blood drips down the sides of its head and oozes from its eyes.

"Eddie," Richie cries, trembling hands coming to rest against his cheeks. He's crouched above Eddie, curling around him like a sentinel. It's silly, to say that he feels infinitely safer in this moment, because Richie weighs all of ninety pounds and has the coordination of a newborn calf, but he does. Because his friends are here now, and if he's going to die then at least it isn't alone. "Eddie, look at me!" But Eddie can't look, can't tear his gaze away from the writhing creature in the corner as It stands, hands curving into claws. (All the better to rip your heart out with, my dear.)

"Look at me!" Richie repeats, desperate, forcing Eddie's face to the side and for the first time Eddie can see him clearly; he's got tear tracks on his cheeks and scrapes on his forearms. His hair is mussed and his glasses are crooked, eyes wild.

He looks  _terrified_ and, deliriously, Eddie thinks he loves him. 

They all watch with baited breath as the monster retreats into the darkness once more, Richie with his arms thrown around Eddie's shoulders, half-obscuring him from the horror before them. Ben's shirt is torn, blood dripping onto his shorts and down his legs. Eddie is shaking so badly he can hardly see. The rotting floor dips a little beneath their combined weight. His throat is raw from screaming.

Richie snaps his arm back into place with a sickening crack, and the world starts to spin and blur around its edges. Through the haze of pain Eddie watches Bill take off after It, that stupidly brave boy. From somewhere on high Richie is screaming, "Bill, we have to help Eddie!" Which is sweet, and Eddie would tell him so if he could find his voice.

Richie comes to him that night, too, shimmying through the open window with an unreadable expression on his face.

"Hey," he says, a little breathless as he straightens his glasses. "I'm glad you're not dead."

He is shaking, just a the tiniest bit, from relief or from fear — Eddie isn't sure which.

"Does it hurt?" Richie nods towards the white plaster on Eddie's right arm.

Eddie rolls his eyes. "No, actually, it feels fucking awesome. I was thinking about throwing myself down the stairs later just so I could break something else." Richie glares at him but says nothing, which is unusual. Eddie can't shake the way he'd held his face in his hands, down on the ground with dirt and blood on their knees, dust in his hair. In his eyes.  _Eddie, look at me!_

There's a long bout of unbearable silence before Richie speaks up again. "I bet your mom is never gonna let you leave the house after this, huh?"

"No way." Eddie shakes his head vigorously. "I'm surprised she didn't handcuff us together the second we got home."

Richie gives him a sympathetic look. "I'll sneak you in some Bottle Caps."

"Thanks."

Another moment of silence. This one is slightly more bearable.

"Are you tired?"

"Nope. I don't think I'm ever gonna sleep again," Eddie answers, and he isn't even half-kidding. "I dozed off for like two seconds in the emergency room and dreamt that the fucking leper came back for my arm." He shudders, notices the way Richie takes a step closer to the bed before sitting down right on the floor. He's still wearing the same clothes from this afternoon, stained with dust and sweat. Eddie had changed the second he got home, all too eager to rid himself of the thick stench of decaythat clung to him like a second skin.

"Same here. I see that motherfucker every time I blink. Maybe I should just stop blinking."

"You need to blink, stupid."

"Do not."

"Do too."

"Bet you I can go a whole minute without blinking."

"Okay, fine. You can't, but whatever. Go."

Richie lasts maybe twenty seconds, fists clenched in concentration before he flinches, lashes fluttering behind his glasses.

"Ha, you blinked!"

"Something got in my eye! Let me go again!" Richie shoots back defensively.

"Absolutely not. You lose. It's a good thing we didn't bet anything."

Richie groans and curls into a ball on Eddie's floor, head thumping softly against the floorboards. Eddie lets his gaze bounce back to the ceiling while Richie mopes like a child. It's nice. Familiar. It's easier like this, to pretend that this afternoon was some sort of hallucination. That the things they'd seen were nothing at all, merely the product of imaginations left to wander a step too far.

"Do you need anything?" Richie asks quietly after a little while, rolling over onto his stomach.

"Yeah, you know, I could actually really use a  _How to Move on After Almost Getting Your Face Eaten by a Killer Clown_ pamphlet. You happen to have one of those?"

"I'm just trying to help."

"I know." Eddie exhales shakily. "Sorry." He doesn't mean to be an ass, but everything is terrifying and strange nowadays, as if someone has turned the fabric of his life inside out. Something is nagging at the corner of his mind, like a dog-eared page skipped over. He shouldn't say it. He shouldn't bring it up, because now really isn't the time. It's not like it even  _matters_.

"Hey, Rich?" The words burst through the dam of Knowing Better, which...okay. Well, fuck not saying anything, then.

"Hm?"

"I was thinking about...back at the house." He swallows hard as Richie stiffens from his position on the floor. "You were, like, holding my face. And my arm was all fucked up and I thought we were gonna die." He sniffles. "I really thought I was gonna die looking at your stupid face."

"Fine. Next time you're staring death in the eye, I'll make sure to move aside so the last thing you see  _isn't_ this beautiful mug." Richie gestures vaguely to his own face, and Eddie snorts.

On any other night this would turn into a ten-minute long shouting match, but neither of them are in the mood and the conversation dies as soon as it begins.

"Why'd you do it?" Eddie asks finally, surprising even himself.

He's not sure what he expects, or what he's hoping for, but Richie just shrugs, twisting the blind cord around his finger. "I don't know. Because you're my friend?"

"Oh." Eddie immediately shushes the part of himself that was hoping for some sort of heartfelt statement. This is  _Richie_. "Okay." A breath of quiet. Then another. "Well, thanks."

Richie looks surprised, mouth curling into a weirdly gentle smile that makes Eddie's chest ache. "'Course."

More nothingness, punctuated only by Richie rapping his knuckles idly against the floor, probably to the beat of a song in his head. Eddie is trying silently to guess which one, but comes up empty-handed. His brain is too muggy, like the filth from Neibolt has somehow made its way inside his skull. The thought makes him shiver. Then —

"Rich?"

"Yeah, Eds?"

"Don't call me that." Eddie pauses and purses his lips. "What did you see? When you and Bill...when you guys were upstairs."

Something that sounds suspiciously like a whimper sounds from the floor, and Eddie wishes he could see Richie's face.

"Just clowns. Just a room full of fuckin' clowns." Irritation flickers in Richie's voice, and somewhere below that there is a trembling he is trying desperately to mask.

"That's all?" Eddie mentally smacks himself for pressing the issue.

"Yep," Richie answers quickly. He's as terrible a liar as Eddie is sometimes.

"Richie?" Eddie doesn't know what's come over him, this primal itch to pick apart Richie's mind and find all the ugly things that are hurting him. He can't stop thinking about how frightened Richie had been, even in his bravery. "You can tell me, you know."

"I don't wanna talk about it."

"That's a first."

"Shut up."

Two heads snap up at the sound of footfalls on the stairs, and then Eddie is hissing, "Hide!" and Richie is wiggling under the bed like a snake and Eddie has to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from giggling at the sight of it.

"How are you feeling, sweetheart?" His mother's voice drifts through the crack in the door, and then the crack widens as her face comes into view. Her face is full of concern and love, and Eddie weighs that against the way she'd called Beverly  _dirty_ earlier, lip curled into a sneer. He thinks about how if Beverly hadn't come in time, he would be dead, and Richie and Bill too. All of them, probably — but Bev  _had_ come, with a warrior's cry and a rusty spike in hand.  _Dirty girl_ , Sonia Kaspbrak had muttered under her breath the entire ride to the ER.  _Bunch of monsters, all of them._ Everything hurts.

"I'm fine, mommy," he murmurs, and he  _swears_  he hears Richie giggle, but it might just be in his head. He's been conditioned to expect it. "Just gonna sleep, I think." He flicks off the bedside lamp before she can come in and do it for him.

If Eddie didn't know any better, he'd say she seems...disappointed that he's not worse for wear.

"Wake me if you need anything, won't you?" she practically pleads, and it makes Eddie's heart cry out with love. "Do you need me to stay in here with you?"

"No!" Eddie practically snaps. She looks startled, hurt. "No, I — I'm okay, really, Ma. I just need to sleep. Thanks, though." As if to prove his point, he scoots down further in the covers, pulling them tight over his chest.

The words that follow are practiced, flowing easily from his tongue: a litany of  _Yes, mommy_ , and  _I love you too, mommy_ , and finally — fucking finally! —  _goodnight, Ma_.

He waits four minutes and twenty-six seconds exactly, until he hears the light at the end of the hall click off, followed by his mother's footfalls on the stairs. He waits another minute, then, preparing for a slew of  _your mom_ jokes, but they never come. The room is quiet. He wonders if Richie is even still breathing down there, first as a joke and then for real.

He leans over the edge of the bed and whispers, "Boo." On any other day it might be funny, though in hindsight this is probably a bad time. Like, a really bad time, as in he probably could not have picked a worse time. Richie's habit of making jokes ill-suited to the situation must be rubbing off on him. Frankly, Eddie is surprised it's taken this long.

He's lucky that Richie doesn't seem too upset, though he does level Eddie with a glare. His glasses already make his eyes look enormous, and with the moonlight reflecting off them it's gotten to a whole new level of ridiculous. He looks like a very disapproving owl. Eddie giggles and carefully slides off the bed so he can sit next to Richie as the other boy crawls out from underneath.

"You laugh now, but I had to have both Ben  _and_ Mike hold me back when Bill punched me in the face. So watch it." He makes a fist and raps it idly against the floor. "Told you all that Street Fighter would pay off."

Eddie half-chokes on his own spit, ignoring the joke. "He  _what_?"

"I don't know." Eddie doesn't think he's ever heard Richie say  _I don't know_ so many times in a single conversation. It's weird, especially considering Richie is an expert at  _pretending_ he's an expert at things he actually knows jack shit about. "We sorta got into a fight. I think he hates me now.

"But he was being crazy, Eds. He was all,  _'Oh, next time we'll be better prepared!'_  And I was like, ' _Motherfucker, are you joking? What the fuck do you mean next time? Eddie almost died!_ '" Richie's gaze falls, and the next words out of his mouth come in a nervous, shameful rush. "And then I sort of yelled at him and told him that Georgie was dead. So he punched me in the face."

"Richie!"

"Yeah," Richie mumbles miserably, slumping down so his face is smushed against Eddie's good arm. "I think I deserved it."

Eddie purses his lips contemplatively and stays quiet.

"It actually doesn't hurt too bad anymore," he says, changing the subject. "My arm, I mean. They gave me so many pain meds, Rich, so it kinda just doesn't feel like anything at all. Probably 'cause I was crying so much, but I wasn't even really crying 'cause it hurt, it's because I was-"

"Because you were so scared," Richie finishes his sentence in a whisper. "I know. I was, too."

Eddie's stomach rolls, and he thinks of sharp teeth glistening with saliva and how despite how scary that was, the scariest thing of all had been seeing Richie, voice hitching with panic as he held the missing poster, a death sentence in his own two hands.  _It says I'm missing._ He's never seen Richie afraid like that before, tough boy bravado torn away entirely. His chest is beginning to ache with the ghost of fear he'd felt earlier, breaths starting to shorten. He crawls back onto and over the bed, fumbling around for his inhaler on the bedside table and shoving it between his lips. He welcomes the bitter taste of it into the back of his throat, lets it seep into his lungs, eyes closed until he can breathe again. He  _hates_  this.

"What're you thinking about?" Richie asks, voice soft with concern. His chin rests on the edge of the mattress and he reminds Eddie of a sad puppy begging for a treat.

Eddie opens his mouth, and he's not exactly sure what he want to say — maybe  _I hate seeing you so afraid, I hate this_  or  _Hey, thanks for trying to protect to me_  or  _Please, please talk to me, please don't shut me out_  — and all that comes out is a squeaked, "Nothing." Then, in an attempt to chase away some of the awkwardness, he offers, "You can up here if you want. On the bed."

Richie responds about as appropriately as expected, waggling his eyebrows and  _Oooooooh!_ -ing in a voice several pitches too high. Eddie almost takes it back, but then Richie is scrambling up onto the bed, invading Eddie's space with his bony knees and warm hands. If he closes his eyes he can feel those hands back on his face, and without thinking he wraps his good arm around Richie's middle.

They're so close that he can feel the way Richie's breath catches, and before he can yank his hand away and apologize Richie just curls in, tucking his head so they're sharing Eddie's pillow. Eddie blinks at him.

It's such a small gesture, but it  _hurts,_ because Richie is a lot of things. He's too loud, and he thinks he's funnier than he actually is, and he's obnoxious and above all else he is Eddie's  _best fucking friend_ , and through it all Eddie loves him in the way only best friends can, though he'll never say it out loud. He'll never say the words out loud, even now, but the thought of losing Richie is more terrifying than anything else that clown could have conjured up. They'd almost lost each other back there, and only now does it strike him that it must have been intentional. It had tried so  _hard_  to keep them apart, luring Eddie in with whispers he couldn't ignore.

The goal, he realizes with a sharp pang of horror, had always been to get him away from Richie. He again finds himself wondering what horrors had really greeted Richie in the dark corners of the Neibolt house.

But Richie is warm and safe next to him, and — that's all he needs right now. Richie is  _safe_. Eddie wonders, briefly, if anyone aside from himself and the other Losers would even care if Richie went missing. His gut instantly curls with guilt at the thought, because it's terrible but it's the truth. They'd been gone for hours this afternoon, but that wasn't unusual — surely Mr. and Mrs. Tozier hadn't even noticed their son's absence. But what if he hadn't come back? What if that...that  _fucking_ thing had finished him off, and Richie too? All of them?

Eddie is a smart boy. He knows there was nobody Richie to come home to, shaking and terrified.  _We're all afraid of something_ , Mike had said, and if Eddie is smart enough to know that Richie has a fear far greater than fucking  _clowns_  then of course It had been, too. He closes his eyes and the word  _MISSING_  screams at him, so he opens them again.

"Hey, Rich?" he murmurs, to which Richie responds with a slurred, half-asleep  _Mhmmm_. "I'm glad you're not dead, either."

There's a soft intake of breath that might be a laugh, but Eddie doesn't think so. Then Richie is fumbling for his hand in the darkness and lacing their fingers together; his hand is soft and kind of sweaty and his grip is too tight, but it's Richie, and he's alive and Eddie is too. They're alive, somehow, and they're together.

"This is kinda gay," Eddie mutters instead, because hanging out with Richie really has fucking destroyed his verbal filter.

"I know you are, but what am I?" Richie sticks out his tongue at him. Eddie laughs, and presses his face into the space between Richie's chin and shoulder.

"Squeeze my hand if you need me," Eddie whispers.

"Yeah," Richie says. Eddie feels him nod. "You too."

He lets Richie hold his hand for the whole rest of the night, but only because he feels like being nice.


	2. II. ROSEBUSH BOY / DECEMBER 1986

_YOU BLOSSOM UNDER KINDNESS,_  
_DON'T YOU/ LIKE A ROSE_

 

Eddie is ten. Eddie knows, courtesy of his mother, the sorts of people he's supposed to avoid.

Older men with lingering stares, coughing infants, girls in short skirts, silver-screen tough boys with cigarettes between their teeth and alcohol on their breath, pregnant teenagers — to name a few.

She's never explicitly said anything about boys Eddie finds hiding in the rosebushes out front.

It's an early December night, and the weather is only now finally starting to cool after an Indian summer. Eddie sits cross-legged on the porch, wrapped snug in a sweater and a jacket and fuzzy socks because he needs some air and he  _hates_ being cooped up in the house all the time.  _Only for a few minutes,_  his mother had said sternly,  _you'll catch your death out there if you're out for too long. And make sure you have your inhaler on you._ Eddie does. It's tucked safely into the pocket of his jeans.

The evening air feels good on his face, and he knows he'll come inside rosy-cheeked and his mother will fret, but he can't bring himself to care. Somewhere down the road, a dog is barking. Laughter emanates from the television blaring inside. It's nice. This is nice. Eddie still feels shackled, limited to the confines of the porch, but like this it's easier to pretend that he's normal and healthy and catching a cold isn't the end of the world. He stretches his legs out down the steps and rests his head against the stair post.

Something rustles in the rosebushes to his left, and Eddie nearly screams, half-expecting a murderer or a rabid dog. 

A mop of dark hair pops out from the mess of leaves, a familiar face half-obscured by thick glasses. 

Okay, so not a rabid dog. It's a  _kid_. Who is probably not a murderer.

Richie. Richie Something-or-other. Eddie knows him. Or rather, he knows of him. One of Bill's friends, though he's Bill's opposite in every way, loud and brash, and Eddie doesn't need to know him to know that he doesn't like him. A rowdy boy, that's what his mother says. She's warned him of his kind, too, dirty boys who get up to nothing but trouble. Bad kids. _Stay away from them, sweet boy,_ she warns, and Eddie listens. She's always been picky about the friends Eddie has been allowed to keep; she loves Bill and tolerates Stan, who wilts like a flower under her hard gaze.

Richie, who for some reason is currently skulking around in Eddie's late father's rose bushes — a parting gift to Sonia Kaspbrak, as Eddie has been told time and time again — is the sort of boy his mother would shoo away without a second thought.

"Hi," the boy says casually as he crawls fully out of the foliage, as if he's not trespassing and hiding on someone else's property.

"What are you  _doing_ out here?" Eddie squeaks. "Go play hide-and-seek somewhere else."

"Not hide-and-seek," Richie answers, shaking his head. "I'm running away. Only for a little while, though."

"Why are you running away?" Eddie casts a cautious glance at the screen door, half-expecting his mother to come barging out. When he hears her chuckling at the television, he breathes a soft sigh of relief and pads down the steps warily, couching down next to the boy in the dirt.

"My dad's pissed."

"Oh." Eddie fights the urge to chew at his thumbnail.

"Your dad ever get mad?"

"My dad is dead."

"Oh. I guess not, then." It's kind of an insensitive comment, but Eddie doesn't really take it to heart. He's right, after all. If his mother asks he'll swear up and down that he misses his father every day, but the truth is that he hardly remembers a thing about him. But if he told her  _that_ she'd never, ever forgive him. With his faulty lungs and stuttering heart, he's already enough of a burden on her. He doesn't need to heighten the disappointment he knows he is.

"I mean, I'm sure he did when he was alive." Statistically speaking, he'd have to have gotten angry at  _some_  point, right? But his mother only speaks fondly of him and all her stories paint memories bright and happy, so Eddie will likely never know.

"Yeah." Richie doesn't sound convinced. He wraps his arms around his knees, shaking away the leaves that have fallen around his face. Then, quietly, he adds, "I hate my dad."

"You shouldn't say stuff like that," Eddie warns, clucking his tongue as if he's his mother. "You don't know what you have until it's gone, that's what my ma says."

"Why not? It's the truth!" Richie nearly shouts, visibly upset, and Eddie presses a finger desperately to his mouth, eyes wide.

"Okay! Okay, I'm sorry, just...just keep your voice down," he whispers, cocking his head as he waits for the familiar sound of his mother's footsteps, but it never comes. "You really shouldn't be out here."

If Eddie squints in the dark, vision aided only by the yellow light from the porch, he swears he can make out the beginning of a bruise curling around the arch of Richie's left brow bone. His stomach starts to ache. Truthfully, it could have been anyone. Henry Bowers has a hit list ten miles long, and there's no way to say that the bruise isn't his doing. Richie could have fallen.

But Eddie isn't so sure. He chews his lip.

"Then can I come inside?"

Eddie's head shoots up, and Richie's face immediately falls. "What? No! My mom will freak if she finds out you were hiding out here to begin with."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry. I forgot your mom's crazy."

Eddie can feel his face getting hot, hands balling into tiny fists at his sides. "How would you know? You don't even know her!"

"She's the one who said she'd sue if you got sick from anyone at school on Parent-Teacher Night, right?"

Color floods Eddie's cheeks, anger dissipating to make way for humiliation. He does not answer, and suspects he doesn't need to when Richie's face splits into a wide grin.

"I'm Richie, by the way." Richie says this as if it isn't the first thing he should've said when Eddie found him in the first place. 

"Yeah, I know. I'm Eddie," he answers, pointedly ignoring Richie's offered hand.

"I know." They both titter awkwardly. "You hang out with Bill sometimes, right?"

"He's my best friend."

Richie narrows his eyes behind his ridiculous coke-bottle glasses. "He's  _my_ best friend."

"Someone can have more than one best friend," Eddie shoots back defensively, even though he's pretty sure that's not true. Richie clearly doesn't think so either, from the way he snorts and rolls his eyes. 

"Can I take one of these?" Richie asks, dropping the subject abruptly. He's pointing to one of the lower-hanging roses, slightly wilted and browning around the edges.

"No!"

"Why not?"

"You can't just take stuff that doesn't belong to you," Eddie huffs.

"I'm  _asking_." Richie's voice takes on an edge of genuine frustration.

"What are you even gonna do with it?"

Richie traces a spiral in the dirt with the tip of his finger. "I dunno. Give it to my mom, maybe."

(In the years to come Eddie will learn that this is nothing new, that Richie always has pockets full of sparkly stones or crumpled up dandelions or dirty feathers that he takes to his mother as peace offerings, little things in a desperate, last-ditch effort to be noticed.)

Eddie hesitates, worrying his lip between his teeth. "If my mom finds out -"

"I won't tell if you don't." Richie looks hopeful.

"Um, I guess maybe just a small one near the bott- wait!" he snaps, reaching out to stop Richie from breaking the stem off with his hands. "You can't just tear it, you need to use gardening shears."

"Or I could just use my teeth."

Eddie groans. "That is  _so_ gross!"

"Then go get the shears," Richie says, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I can't. The shed door is really noisy and my mom will hear." Eddie looks up apologetically, wringing his hands. "Sorry."

Richie flops back into the dirt with a defeated sigh, and the sight of him pouting is so sad it's almost worth just sucking it up and going to get the shears.  _Almost_.

"I should really get going," Eddie says instead, not meeting Richie's eye. "But you can stay out here if you need to, I guess." He feels helpless and silly, offering up this spot under the bushes as if that's worth anything, but he has nothing else.

Only now does he notice that Richie doesn't even have a jacket, just a long-sleeved white flannel under an oversized bowling shirt. If Eddie could get inside, he could grab him a blanket and maybe something to eat,  _Jesus_ , this kid is skinny —

His mother is calling him now, and Eddie feels the leash tighten, an invisible pull dragging him back inside.

"I really have to go," he insists again before turning and heading back up the porch stairs, guilt weighing heavy in his stomach. From here, he can almost feel the house's inviting warmth and again he thinks of Richie's thin shirts, of how severely the temperatures drop overnight.

He stops walking once and then twice more, hesitation in his every step, before he finally throws caution to the wind and runs back to where Richie is, landing on his knees in the dirt. His heart pounds erratically as he does something he's probably going to regret — he grips the base of a stem and tears a small, wilting rose free with his hand. "Here, take it," he says, perhaps a bit too forcefully, shoving it into Richie's hands. He stands, wavering for another moment before yanking his jacket off and tossing it to him as well. 

"Eddie? What are you doing out there?" his mother's voice sounds from somewhere dangerously close to the door. Without looking back, Eddie turns on his heel and nearly crashes into her on his way inside. She ushers him through the door with a hand on his shoulder, scolding him for not being more bundled up and exiling him to his bedroom for the rest of the night.

Which is fine. It's just where Eddie wants to be, anyway.

He doesn't want to look. He shouldn't look. He should just let Richie be and go to sleep, but that resolve lasts maybe two minutes before he sighs and pads over to the window, peering out through a crack in the blinds, down to the spot Richie has made a safe place. 

Richie is still there, all wrapped up in Eddie's jacket with the hood pulled over his head, twirling the rose gently between his fingers. He looks up abruptly, as if he senses Eddie's eyes on him. When he meets his gaze, his face perks up a little and all Eddie can see is that bruise, brighter than ever in the moonlight. Richie waggles his fingers playfully at him.  

For a rowdy boy, Eddie thinks — and Richie  _is_ one, no doubt — he's really awfully soft.

Eddie waves back once, awkwardly, before scooting back from the window and sliding between the sheets. His toes are cold and his bed is warm.

He falls asleep and dreams of the bruise on Richie's face, then dreams that he has powers that can take it away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it's pretty obvious that richie and eddie probably knew each other before they were 10 but shhhhhhh i took some creative liberties
> 
> idk why im obsessed with the idea of richie hiding in rosebushes but i am and so i wrote it

**Author's Note:**

> this is honestly just an excuse to throw together all the ideas i have floating around in the ol' noggin for these two. tags will be updated as i go...it's gonna get gay and it's gonna get sad.


End file.
